


borrowed technique

by gladdecease



Category: Naruto
Genre: Community: 100_situations, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-11
Updated: 2007-04-11
Packaged: 2017-10-15 17:43:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gladdecease/pseuds/gladdecease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something off about Shikamaru.  His mom says he's <em>studying</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	borrowed technique

Ino walked to Shikamaru's house around mid-morning a few days after the funeral to see if he was awake yet - she and Chouji were thinking of seeing if the Hokage had a mission that they could take. His mother, slightly shaken, told her that he had locked himself in his room, stacks of books and a small pile of scrolls his only companions.

She thought she might wait for him to come out, but Yoshino-san said that he had locked himself in the night before, after playing a day-long game of shougi against himself.

As Ino walked away from the Nara household, she laced her fingers together behind her back and looked up at the sky. "How weird..."

She had never seen him study before.

The next day, she brought Chouji with her. There hadn't been a mission for a two-man team, and though some three-man missions were available, they still needed Shikamaru to come with to ask for it.

They found him standing just outside the house, holding a wrist steady with his hand. He was focusing chakra, and it was such an odd sight (Shikamaru _never_ needed to concentrate on chakra, and it looked like he was trying to form Kakashi-sensei's _chidori_ right in his face) that Ino almost didn't notice what he was focusing chakra into.

Then his hands started to shine an odd sort of color - the same odd darker-than-normal shadow color she noticed on the ground whenever Shikamaru used _kagemane_ and in the air when he used _kage nui_ \- and she realized that she knew that trench knife the color was seeping into. She glanced at Chouji, and saw that he recognized it too.

"Hey, Shikamaru..." 

He glanced up at Ino, only then seeming to recognize that his teammates were there. "Ino. Chouji."

"Shikamaru, when you’re done working with those knives, wanna see if Tsunade-sama has a mission?"

Shikamaru grumbled, and went back to focusing on his chakra. The shadowy glow around the blade seemed to grow darker, and stronger. He grinned, but it looked too sharp for his normal lazy smile. "The Godaime always has a mission for somebody..."

Finally, when the color was so dark that she could scarcely tell there was a knife underneath all that chakra, he slid the knife off his hand and tossed it at her.

Ino blocked the knife instinctively. It landed point-down on the dirt in front of her. "Shikamaru, what was that for? We just wanted to go on - "

Her hand, brought up to grab Shikamaru by the collar, froze before her eyes - as did her entire body. Shikamaru smirked. "So it does work, then."

Chouji, looking at the ground, nodded. "I see, I see. That’s pretty cool, Shikamaru."

"What is? What is?" Ino struggled against the make-shift _kage shibari_ , her curiosity aroused. "What'd you do to this thing, Shikamaru?"

The chuunin shrugged. "The knives absorb the properties of your chakra. Asuma-sensei's was wind, so with him they cut. Mine controls shadows, so with me they control any shadow they're thrown into." He crouched down in front of Ino and pulled the knife out of the ground where it landed.

She took the knife from him, inspecting it. "That's a pretty nice trick." Handing the knife back, she said, "So, about that mission..."

Shikamaru shook his head. "I'm still in the middle of one, though my team's incomplete." He scratched his head idly, glancing between Ino and Chouji. "Actually... I could use two more teammates, if you're interested.

"What do you say? Feel like tracking down Akatsuki?"

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "Knife" at [100_situations](http://community.livejournal.com/100_situations). My table is [here](http://community.livejournal.com/glad_fics/18783.html).


End file.
